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Sunday, June 3, 2012

Flame Princess wig progress/information

I've had a few people ask me about how I did my Flame Princess wig, and honestly, I made it up as I went.

I started with: a Cosplay Wigs USA Pumpkin 90cm long curly wig. (it was a lot lighter than the photo)
Clear Elmer's School Glue
a curved sewing needle
thick strong thread
clear thread
foam brushes
lots of bobby pins (to hold it in place as you glue it)

The curls made it harder to work with, but if I made it again, I'd still use the curly one, just because I really loved the curls that came set into the wig. I used the same wig in green for my Jadesprite costume.

First off, the orange wasn't the color I wanted it, so I dyed it a bit darker orange.
I used this method (click for full resolution)

But instead of putting it in a tub to soak, I put my dye in a spray bottle and sprayed it in sections all over my wig. I actually WANTED it to not be 100% even in color. I thought the variances in shades of orange would make it look a little bit more realistic.
After it dried overnight, I loosely braided it before I washed out the extra dye, so it wouldn't get quite as tangled. Its going to get VERY tangled through the whole dyeing and rinsing process.

Red and orange dyes never really wash out 100%, so I gave up after about half an hour of washing it in the tub, under COLD water.

After rinsing, I made a solution of lotion and water in a spray bottle and shook it up really well until it was a could water. This makes a good detangler, which will smell like whatever lotion you use.
I just sprayed it all over a tangle and started working it out gently, starting at the BOTTOM of the fibers.
It took longer to detangle it than it did to rinse it.
I let the wig sit overnight again to dry throughly, and I sectioned it out into a lot of equal sections before I started to style it.

I carved a block of green florist's foam into a rough cone-type shape, then covered it with a red-orange craft foam, which I forgot to take a photo of before I sewed it into my wig with thick button thread.

I sewed it to the vertical elastic in the wig, in the position I wanted it. I didn't remove any wefts underneath where I put the cone, since it wasn't super large.

After I made sure the cone was where I wanted it, I used the foam brushes to spread glue all over the cone and started to use small sections of hair from close to the cone to cover it. I spread out the hair evenly and made sure to really saturate it with glue, since this was the base coat of fiber and you wouldn't see it anyway.

I made up the wrapping pattern as I went, and I needed to add some more volume to the base of the cone, so I pulled out some small sections of hair and teased and back combed it until I had a nice fluffy tangled mess, which I rolled up and sewed into position with the clear thread.

it looks kind of nasty and really messy at this point, but you cover it all up int he end, and this was a lot easier to me than to try to make a pad out of foam or batting, since it was soft, and exactly the same color as the wig.

I didn't have much of a plan on how I was going to wrap it up, but I knew what I kind of wanted it to look like in the end.
I would take bobby pins and pin it in a way to see if I liked how it looked, and I would un-pin it, use the foam brush to burst a little bit of glue on the fiber in sections, starting nearer the roots, placing that where I wanted it, and pinned it where I wanted it before eI move on further down the section of fiber.

Almost finished:

I don't know what else to say about it, except that it took over 15 hours (nearly straight!) of styling, and about 2 and half days of just dyeing it and rinsing it out.

I just kept wrapping and pinning and unpinning and gluing and pinning it again.

Once I got to the outermost layer, I didn't coat the entire section of fiber with glue, I kind of put a line of glue where I knew it would be pinned and made sure the section I was glueing was really stuck down.

After I had the whole outer layer pinned and glued down, I let that dry for a while.
After it had all dried, I used the curved needle and the clear thread to sew into my wig to hold down all the little curls and to make sure the outermost layer didn't budge.

The wig is REALLY back -heavy, so I got a couple of toupee clips and sewed into the front, right about where the hairline is above my eyes.

And that's it.
I didn't use any hairspray on this, since I dyed it with alcohol, and hairspray is primarily alcohol, which would have ended up with the color being stripped out or running if I had used it as my primary adhesive.

I apologize I didn't see this comment sooner.I might consider it in the future, but I can always take commissions! Please email me at angryrobotscosplay@gmail.com if you would like to talk about commissions :)

I love your wig design! you actually made me buy the same wig for my flame princess Cosplay!

My wig is tangled like crazy at the moment. >_< In the section where you said you de-tangled it, you said you used cold water in a spray bottle with lotion. Does it matter what lotion you use? Like is it just normal moisturizing body lotion?

Also, with dying the wig. Is it possible to use powder dye in a spray bottle with cold water? does dye damage the wig?

Sorry about the long questions. You have inspired me to do my own Flame Princess cosplay with your amazing blog! :)

To untangle it, I just took a spray bottle, squirted a lotion I liked into it, so it was like 1/3 full, and filled it the rest of the way with water, leaving a little air at the top so it could mix when I shook the bottle.Be sure to shake your bottle up super well, and just spray it on the tangly bits, using a COMB, not a brush to gently pick out the tangles, starting at the bottom :)

I wouldn't know if powder dye would work, it most likely WILL NOT. Dye inherently damages the wig because you're changing the original color. It shouldn't melt it or anything like that. test out the dye on a small sample of the hair form the wig to see if it will work. I've only used sharpies to dye wigs so that's all I can give advice on :)

I am going to go with the sharpie dying technique as I don't want to damage the wig.

My wig is already quite tangled at the moment so before I dye (I am only going to be dying the bottom parts of the wig at this stage) I will be de-tangling it as much as I can (With what you suggested the lotion in the spray bottle) and start to braid most of the hair (Like you did during the dying process)

I will let you know how it goes? :P You are the best teacher!

Again thank you for your time it has helped me and gave me confidence to be able to do this whole process (This is my first cosplay ever)